Last fall, President Trump chose to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a program that opened a path for immigrant youth to learn, work, and thrive by granting them temporary relief from deportation. While engaging in harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and making it even more difficult to craft responsible immigration policy, the President told Congress to fix the problems he created by ending DACA.
In Wisconsin, ending DACA will directly affect about 10,000 young immigrants who are potentially eligible. This decision will also affect their families, including thousands of children born to DACA participants. Thousands of young Wisconsin residents have had their futures jeopardized by the President’s decision to end DACA and subsequent Congressional foot-dragging. In addition to the human cost this has caused for those individually impacted, these decisions have other costs as well. All of us are harmed when we fail to treat every person with the compassion and respect they deserve as human beings.
While there is significant social harm caused to individuals and our society as a whole, there are also economic costs. The requirement to pay taxes is separate from immigration status and undocumented workers make substantial contributions to public funds in the form of state and local income taxes, as well as federal income and payroll taxes. In fact, undocumented workers pay a higher share of their income in state and local taxes than taxpayers in the top 1% by income. Undocumented workers in Wisconsin pay 7.5% of their income in taxes, compared to 6.2% of income for the very richest Wisconsin taxpayers.
In addition to contributions made in the form of tax revenue, undocumented workers are valuable parts of the workforce and to their communities. Almost all DACA-eligible individuals are students or workers, with one-quarter of them managing both college studies and work. DACA-eligible workers are concentrated in white-collar occupations such as health care support and education. In fact, nine thousand educators across the country were protected by DACA status, and now must face the possibility that they will lose their permission to teach and otherwise support schools and communities.
Despite all of this, the future of many immigrant youth remains in limbo, and others have already lost their work authorization and driver’s licenses. Continuing to block young immigrants from fully realizing their potential also blocks them from making further contributions to Wisconsin, for many the only home they’ve ever known. While much of Wisconsin faces a declining and aging workforce, rejecting youth with demonstrated commitment to education and hard work – a requirement of the DACA program—threatens the future of Wisconsin’s economy.
Extending or improving DACA would allow immigrants to expand the contributions they are already making to Wisconsin’s communities and economies. If Congress fails to act, they will be disregarding the strong support that Americans show for fixing DACA and extending protection for immigrant youth. One poll shows, nearly three out of every four Americans favor granting permanent legal status to immigrants brought to the U.S. without documents when they were children. Support is stronger among Democrats who were polled, but Republicans were also more likely to support a pathway to permanent legal status for undocumented youth than to oppose it.
Advocates throughout the country are calling on Congress to act and fix the problem created by the President. To learn more about DACA and immigrant rights in Wisconsin visit http://vdlf.org/.
Ken Taylor
